


There's Something About Her

by maevestrom



Series: FE Rarepair Week 2019 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Autumn, Childhood Friends, F/F, FE Rarepair Week 2019, Halloween, Hot Chocolate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 15:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevestrom/pseuds/maevestrom
Summary: FE Rarepair Week 2019Prompt 2: CocoaSully's not sure how she went from "returning from college" to "crushing on her childhood best friend" but it probably has something to do with how Lissa has these things that Sully notices, and how they're the right combination of things to lead them both on a wild goose chase getting close to each other.





	There's Something About Her

Sully doesn’t know how she got here. 

The last few months after she returned have been a whirlwind and then some. Somehow it’s led to this moment of Lissa all but dragging Sully along to see if anyone put up any Halloween decorations like Lissa isn’t the only one who  _ would  _ before the first day of October. She’s got a mug of cocoa in her hand that splashes through a straw when she jogs and two holes in her beanie for her gravity-defying middle-finger-to-the-gods pigtails to stick out of. Lissa is such a dork. She’s been a dork since the two of them were kids. Sully’s always loved that about her, even when Lissa thinks she looks like an ignoramus. 

Just at this point, Sully thinks she  _ likes  _ it too. 

“Look at that!” Lissa lets go of Sully’s hand and points at one of the yards and, well, Sully be damned, she actually sees some sort of decoration on it. 

Too bad it’s just a couple of foam gravestones that look like they’re from a dollar store. Sully snorts. “They tried, I guess.”

Lissa laughs nervously. “I mean, it’s something, at least.” Sully looks over at Lissa for a moment, just a moment before Lissa can catch that Sully cares, and to her eyes (not that she’s exactly a psychologist) she looks kind of embarrassed. 

“Aw, it’s fine,” Sully responds. “Who cares if they’re lame?”

Lissa giggles a little. She’s still radiating off apologies for herself and Sully takes her hand again to try and reassure her to not worry. And sure as the devil, Lissa’s entire demeanor changes. 

“Thanks, Sully.”

Sully gives a casual shrug but inside she’s happy that it worked. Stealth isn’t her strong suit, but in this sort of crush-y casual state, it’s a helluva lot of fun to see what she can get away with. 

Besides, it’s nice to hold her hand again in that sort of  _ we’re friends  _ way that now that Sully’s finished schooling abroad, seems to have a little kick of  _ unless?  _ in it. Maybe because overseas life was fucking  _ boring  _ and back here in Ylisstol it isn’t. 

Or Lissa isn’t. 

Damn it. 

Damn, damn, goddamn, godfucking _ damn _ it, she is in  _ dee-hee-heeeeep _ . 

The two are walking again, and Sully kind of likes it that this rich douche didn’t decorate their yard well enough. Lissa lives in a wealthy neighborhood so it’s not really that they  _ couldn’t  _ do an elaborate Halloween setup in friggin’ may if they wanted to, it’s just that, really, only Lissa does. And even though Lissa has her eyes set out for anything she can show Sully, joke’s on her, because Sully thinks crazy decor that even  _ she  _ thinks is overdoing it should be Lissa’s  _ thing,  _ like the holes in all of her hats that Maribelle stitched in, or the kooky interior design projects in warehouses that Sully always addresses with an aggressive  _ wow!,  _ or the cocoa cup with the cartoon kittens on the side, or the freckles on her cheek that flare out like a frill neck lizard when she gets one of those big toothy smiles on her face, and Sully was aware that Lissa had  _ things  _ before, but now that she’s come back and Lissa’s twenty-three and in college herself and more refined and shameless (to a degree) in her Lissa-ness, she’s accommodated her by flat-out adoring the things that just  _ scream  _ Lissa to her.

“Is there  _ anything? _ ”

Lissa’s aggravation shocks Sully out of her own thoughts, and it’s just as well that Lissa couldn’t find anything because she probably would have zonked out during it until Lissa shook her to an alert state. 

“Ya can’t help it if they’re cheap bastards,” Sully says helpfully. 

“I  _ know,  _ but they could stand to have a little fun.”

“Maybe you’re just hogging it all.”

Lissa places her hand on her hip, her other one holding onto an unopened umbrella Maribelle probably gave her because she probably has a closet full of ones just like that. Sully thoughtfully points above to theoretical raindrops that are starting to hit her face as she looks up. “Unless you want those corn stalks of yours to get wet.”

Lissa pops it with an exaggerated glare. “ _ Thank  _ you, Sully.” 

Sully shrugs. “I’m just looking out for you, Liss.” Sully wonders if Lissa has noticed how Sully doesn’t call her  _ half-pint  _ or  _ mini-me  _ like she used to when Lissa was still the teen and Sully barely an adult (she barely is now) but Lissa doesn’t seem to react, so she shrugs and pulls the hood on her dad’s old shaggy overcoat over her short-cut hair.

Lissa looks at her. “Hell nah,” she says with forceful disapproval. “This umbrella can cover two.”

Sully assesses in a picosecond that it most certainly can-the-frick- _ not. _ She can kind of squeeze under it, but it’s gonna be a tight fit. Even when it’s Lissa, Sully doesn’t really freak out over cute girls she doesn’t know in her personal space, but if Lissa does, oh well. She takes the handle of the umbrella and holds it over both of their heads. Yeah, that umbrella pulls the two so close it’s like a get-along shirt or Maribelle trying to hook them up from a distance. 

“You’re gonna spill your cocoa,” Sully justifies. “Especially if you try and hold this thing and pull me along.” 

Lissa beams a little, which isn’t what she expected but she’ll take it. “Thank you, Sully.”

“Just looking out for ya.”

Lissa looks ahead with something in her eyes that Sully can’t quite make out except she seems a little overwhelmed. That nerves her out a little, cause it seems like they’re getting close to something, and Sully isn’t really ready for the train to get into the station, but  _ shit,  _ she better be. 

“We’re gonna find some freakin’ decorations,” she insists darkly. 

“You know we can just walk around the neighborhood, right, Liss?” 

Lissa slumps at the suggestion. “I mean, I  _ guess?  _ But I was  _ sure  _ that there was gonna be at least  _ something  _ to show you around here.”

“Show  _ me? _ ”

She nods. “Like, I guess it seems silly. I just didn’t wanna no-reason invite you to do something. That’d have been so lame.”

Sully sucks in a breath. She figures that it kinda makes sense why Lissa was so bummed out not to see any decorations, well, more bummed out than the goofy kid in her would be. Which is really just not correct by any metric. As soon as Lissa suggested something Sully was down because she’s in a mood right now. A mood where the most fun thing she can do is hang around Lissa. 

An infatuated mood.

Because she’s an idiot. 

But, hey, she’s here. 

“You know what, Liss,” Sully starts. “You can invite me to all the no-reason walks you want, and I’ll be fine. Or all the no-reason anythings, you know, you don’t always have to have a reason for doing things with me, you hear?” 

Lissa sighs. “Yeah, it’s… complicated.”

“Sure you’re not complicating it more than it should be?”

“Hell no I’m not!” she protests, hands gesticulating so hard a bit of cocoa hits Sully’s jacket like  _ that’s  _ what the problem is. “I don’t like inviting you to do things and having nothing to show for it. At all! That just feels so…” Instead of words, she gesticulates some more as if she can physically manifest them that way. 

“Look,” Sully says. There isn’t much distance between them thanks to the umbrella, so she places her spare hand on Lissa’s shoulder. “Maybe I said what I said wrong. I mean it like, I kinda want you to start asking me out for no-reason things.”

Lissa gasps. She drops her travel mug for a second but catches it in time. 

“Is it that big a deal?” 

“I mean,  _ yeah,  _ you just told me to ask you out!”

Sully replays her words in her head. She could deny it all she wants, but nope, that’s basically exactly what she said. 

Well. 

She shrugs, too numb for emotion. “Well, that’s out, I guess.”

“You did  _ not  _ mean to do that,” she accuses. 

“Okay, so I  _ didn’t, _ ” Sully retorts. “Geez, I’m already about to jump in front of a car. If we spend time playing English teacher over my words I definitely will.” 

She looks behind her. There’s no traffic. Damn it. 

“I just… damn it.” Lissa starts to choke up, hand on her knees with cocoa in tow, and Sully isn’t sure what to do, so she doesn’t move because that’s probably close to right. Maybe she’ll spend that time re-evaluating everything she ever thought about Lissa and how it led to this. 

Then Lissa giggles a little. 

It’s clearly a teary one, but Sully’s hyped enough right now to ask “what the hell was that?”

Lissa stands up. “Okay, I’m okay,” she swears. “But, like… you? You said something first?”

“Crazy, right?” Then Sully thinks. “Waiholup, ‘first’?”

Lissa giggles. “You couldn’t tell? Even a little bit?” Accommodatingly, Sully creates (and vocalizes) the “boosh” motion from her head. “Girl, I’ve been into you since we were kids! I mean, you were four years older so I knew that I was just your little friend, but, like, I was like ‘she’s back, wait, you might actually have a chance now if you wanna go for it!’”

Sully chuckles. “Wow, okay, I’m sorry you’ve been crushing on an idiot for so long.” 

Lissa wraps her free arm around Sully. “I think I can let that slide.” Stomping her feet in excitement: “I just can’t actually believe you said something first!”

Sully nods. She might be blushing a little too. Not like this is the first time Lissa’s ever hugged her, but it’s the first time Sully realizes she means something about it. “Yeah, I mean… anytime you just wanna see me, like hang out, or go out… these have been like, the thing I love doing most. I just like… being around you, I guess.” 

Lissa looks up at her. “Me?”

Sully doesn’t need to think about it to nod, but she does anyways. When Sully knew Lissa as a teenager, they did everything together, even though Lissa was twelve when they met and always lagging behind Sully in all that timey wimey shit. Lissa was fun, game for anything, and did what she wanted. Yet Lissa was in this perpetual cycle of defiance and shame. Like, she always did what she wanted, yeah, and then she felt embarrassed about what she wanted, and even though she’s less so now, Sully never appreciated that some wounds never leave. 

Can she believe that Lissa had a crush on her? Thinking about it, yeah, kind of. Sully being cool in her eyes was never a question. Lissa just doesn’t seem to think that now, a decade later, Sully might be crushing a little back. 

So she makes sure to mean it when she says “Yeah, Lissa. You’re amazing, and I really like the things you do.”

Lissa sniffles and, setting the cocoa on the sidewalk next to their feet, reaches up and sets her hand on Sully’s chest, leaning  _ all  _ the way into her personal space. Sully isn’t sure what she expected- from Lissa, maybe a glomp, or something more casual than this mystified, intimate touch, but hey, even if she’s surprised by a new Lissa thing… damn, she kinda loves it too. 

**Author's Note:**

> this dynamic is fucking underrated


End file.
